Originally posted by Zammy-Sam
Hmmmm, very interesting jeb1138!.
Thanks! I've got even more interesting info too! (I hope!)
Originally posted by Zammy-Sam
but unfortunately the market for peripheral devices belongs to the pcs and they seem to be really up with USB 2.0
There is no pc or laptop sold without USB 2.0 in these days.
And there are not many companies producing firewire devices, no matter if for pc or mac.
Actually, there are a lot of Firewire devices. Often they are the 'professional-grade' devices so you probably just haven't noticed them. Consider the major peripherals that need high-speed data rates:
1. Digital cameras
2. Digital video cameras
3. Hard drives
4. Printers
5. Scanners
6. MP3 players
How is firewire doing in all of these?
1. Almost every current professional grade digital camera is firewire. Go check out Canon's and Kodak's websites, for example. Canon has 1 that isn't firewire, and it's the low end of the professional grade and it uses USB 1. All of Kodak's professional grade cameras are firewire.
2. Every digital video camera I've heard of (and I've heard of a lot!) uses firewire, and firewire only, to transfer video.
3. Every company that I know of that manufactures external hard drives or hard drive kits makes more or at least as many firewire harddrives as USB 1 & 2 hard drives combined.
4. Failure!
Firewire has failed with printers, for some reason. Anybody know why? I don't. Perhaps because of the 4.5m cable length limit (one more reason we need Firewire 800!)
5. Many, many high-end and especially professional scanners use firewire. Epson's most expensive scanner, for example, supports only firewire and SCSI, even though it has various USB 2 scanners already.
6. The iPod! What more must I say? Even PC MP3 players (ones with a decent amount of space) include firewire now. The Nomad Jukeboxes, for example.
Firewire has been and will continue to be very successful, especially as digital cameras, video cameras, scanners, &etc get higher & higher resolutions.
I think Apple understands the peripheral market and its directions a lot better than the rest of the industry. For example:
1. USB 1
2. Airport 802.11b
3. Firewire 400
And Apple's involvement in them:
1. Apple pioneered the use of USB 1. They pushed the rest of the industry into that success.
2. Apple pioneered the use of WiFi (802.11b). They were the first company to ship laptops with built-in Airport (802.11b) cards, to include internal antennas and the only one still (that I know of) to include built-in airport slots and antennas in their desktops.
3. Apple pioneered the use of Firewire 400. In fact, they invented it!
Now Apple is beginning to include bluetooth built-in on their laptops -- ahead of the industry, pushing the industry again. For those reasons I trust Apple's judgement about peripheral technologies.
I agree with you that USB 2
must eventually be included on Macintoshes, because the sluggish PC world has gotten it into its head that USB 2 is a good idea and the PC world will bring much of the peripheral market with them eventually. Eventually, but not yet. Do a survey of current consumer scanners, digital cameras, printers, card readers, etc. and I think you'll see that USB 2 hasn't
really hit the market very hard yet.
Basically I think Apple understands that USB 2 is, well, a stupid idea, and I think Apple understands that eventually it must support USB 2 as well. But I think it's a good idea for Apple to use whatever power it has to try to push firewire and fight USB 2 for as long as possible.
USB 2 is a stupid idea because:
1. Computers
are heading towards the digital hub role.
2. The digital hub
needs firewire.
3. If the digital hub needs firewire, and it
has firewire, then the digital hub
doesn't need USB 2.
4. USB 2 costs more than USB 1 (to put on a motherboard and to put in a device), and I don't like to pay more for things, especially when they aren't very useful.
There are plenty of firewire hubs out there, I looked on google and saw at least 6 or 7 different brands right off.
You haven't seen firewire routers for home networking because firewire 400 wasn't very good for networking at all. Again, can you imagine networking hardware becoming popular which required every cable to be less than 4.5m long? That's why we need Firewire 800! And that's why I'm so glad Apple has it out! I hope they have big plans up their sleeves for Firewire 800, because it sure has a lot of potential.
p.s. -- come to think of it, maybe USB 2 did have had at least one redeeming quality: it put the pressure on Apple & their partners to get Firewire 800 out.
